The S1 serine protease family is one of the largest and most biologically important protease families.D espite their biomedical significance,g eneric approaches to generate potent, class-specific, bioactive non-covalent inhibitors for these enzymes are still limited. In this work, we demonstrate that Ahp-cyclodepsipeptides represent as uitable scaffold for generating target-tailored inhibitors of serine proteases.F or efficient synthetic access,wedeveloped apractical mixed solidand solution-phase synthesis that we validated through performing the first chemical synthesis of the two natural products Tasipeptin Aand B. The suitability of the Ahp-cyclodepsipeptide scaffold for tailored inhibitor synthesis is showcased by the generation of the most potent human HTRA protease inhibitors to date.W ea nticipate that our approach maya lso be applied to other serine proteases,thus opening new avenues for asystematic discovery of serine protease inhibitors.Serine proteases of the S1 family (trypsin/chymotrypsinlike) are one of the largest and biomedically relevant protease families.[1] In contrast to the design of covalent inhibitors or activity-based probes for this enzyme class, [2] generic approaches for designing potent, enzyme-class-specific,c ellactive,and non-covalent small-molecule inhibitors are highly limited and have been achieved only for distinct serine proteases.[3] Consequently,a lternative approaches for the systematic generation of such chemical probes are urgently required.Ahp-cyclodepsipeptides (also termed cyanopeptolins or peptolides) are aclass of over 100 peptidic natural products of non-ribosomal origin that display potent inhibitory properties against serine proteases.[4] All Ahp-cyclodepsipeptides are containing an Ahp (3-amino-6-hydroxy-2-piperidone) unit and an N-methyl aromatic amino acid at conserved positions in their 19-membered ring structure,while other residues are much less conserved (Figure 1a). Crystal structures of Ahpcyclodepsipeptides in complex with serine proteases indicate that inhibition is based on as ubstrate-like binding mode in which distinct amino acid residues occupy the S-and S'-pockets,h owever,p roteolytic cleavage does not occur (Figure 1b,S chechter and Berger nomenclature is used).[5] Accordingly,t hey act in as imilar manner to proteinaceous canonical serine protease inhibitors,w ith the conserved residues stabilizing the inhibitory fold, while the other less conserved residues define serine protease selectivity through optimal accommodation to the specific Sa nd S'-sites.T his suggests that Ahp-cyclodepsipeptides may represent as uit- Figure 1. Structural features and determinants of Ahp-cyclodepsipeptides for serine protease inhibition. a) Chemicals tructures of the natural product Ahp-cyclodepsipeptides TasA (1)a nd TasB (2). The red color indicates strictly conserved residues found in all so far known Ahp-cyclodepsipeptides; residues only rarely modified in Ahp-cyclodepsipeptides are depicted in green, and fully variable residues in blue. Note that th...